Clause 3 - Drug offence searches: England and Wales
Drugs Bill
Public Bill Committees, 1 February 2005, 9:10 am
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Chesham & Amersham, Conservative)
I am grateful to the Minister. She has obviously taken some pains to look into this subject, which is certainly one that worries me greatly. Nine out of 10 young adult prisoners, for example, say that they used drugs prior to imprisonment, but only one in three young offenders institutions provide drug treatment programmes. The statistics that I quoted when I moved the amendment certainly show that there is an enormous problem with substance abuse in our prisons. Notwithstanding that, some terrific work is being done in prisons by the CARATs teams and others to try to bring appropriate treatment, but that is against a background of diminishing resources. The prison budget is frozen at the moment, as is recruitment, and more and more strains are being put on the Prison Service. Something has to give.